On August 21, the First Session of the Ministerial Joint Conference on National Circulation Work (hereinafter referred to as the “Conference”), Jiang Zengwei, the convener of the Conference and Vice Minister of Commerce presided over and addressed the Conference. The main task of the Conference is to implement the Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Reform of Circulation System (Guo Fa [2012]No.39) and Circular of the General Office of the State Council on Printing and Issuing the Plan for Specifying Work Key Department Functions for Deepening a Reform of the Circulation System and Accelerating the Development of Circulation Industry (Guo Ban Han [2013]No.69), examine the working rules of the joint conference and decide the key work and schedule of 2013 after study. 19 member departments of the joint conference such as State Development and Reform Commission attended the Conference. Principals of related departments of the Ministry of Commerce attended the Conference.

According to the Conference, the Ministerial Joint Conference on National Circulation Work is an important organizational guarantee decided by the Guo Fa [2012]No.39 document and an important platform for departments to communicate and coordinate with each other for well joint development of the reform and development of circulation, playing an important role in the reform and development of the circulation industry.

In the Conference, it is decided to convene regular sessions twice a year (the first one is to deploy work and the second one is to summarize the work of the whole year) and convene liaison meetings with the whole or part of members irregularly to carry out special survey on key work and gain specific achievements. The office of the Joint Conference locates at the Department of Circulation Industry of the Ministry of Commerce to be responsible for organizing and coordinating, conveying the progress of related work and policies and measures to provinces and regions through the special issue of national work on reform and development of circulation, and notifying to related departments, and reporting to the State Council the significant problems.

The Conference deliberated the key work of 2013 and decided to put forward practical and feasible goals, specify division of work of departments, lose no time and concentrate to do surveys and issue specific and workable work deployment or implementing plans for the purpose of making efforts to gain partial achievements on carrying out comprehensive pilot projects of modern circulation, strengthening infrastructure of circulation, enhancing the legal construction of the industry, accelerating building of credit system, increasing the efforts to support small and medium enterprises financing, promoting the standardization and informatizaiton of logistics and reinforcing statistics of circulation industry according to a series of guidance of leaders of the State Council and combining the tasks and policies decided by the file Guo Fa [2012]No.39. After the Conference, Vice Minister Jiang Zengwei convened related departments and bureaus of the Ministry of Commerce to further study and deploy the follow-up work of implementing the spirits of the Conference.